Tag Archive: Susan B. Anthony

So one of the courses I’m taking this semester is Public/Engaged Anthropology, which is exploring how to involve communities at all levels of anthropology, from helping design research questions to producing the final publications to distributing the information. Thursday this past week I heard a guest lecture from Whitney Battle-Baptiste, a black feminist archaeologist (meaning she’s a black feminist archaeologist, and she does black feminist focused archaeology). She explained that for years she resisted the label feminist, because most of the African-American community views feminism as anti-family, anti-men, and fairly self-centered. And she eventually came to the realization that it’s not. Sure, there are feminists who might fall under those labels, but most do not. Battle-Baptiste stressed that “feminism” really is “feminisms” – it’s the idea of listening to multiple voices and allowing multiple viewpoints to be expressed. Her admission of this struggle helped me, because this is something I’ve struggled with. Since working at the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum last summer, I’ve struggled with whether I should call myself a feminist. As a man coming from a white, conservative, Christian perspective, “feminism” came to me with a lot of negative connotations, just like it did for Battle-Baptiste. But I certainly support equal political and social rights for women. I support equal political and social rights for everyone, actually. And I love studying issues of gender, class, and social interactions. Therefore, I’m proud to say: I’m a feminist.

I made this declaration a few days ago on Facebook, with the hashtag #letthefiringsquadcommence. A lot of interesting conversations sprang up, and I think (as I expected) I sparked some controversy from some of my other conservative-minded friends. So my question is: What does feminism mean to you?

As you can see if you go through the post history, I have not added any new content here for over a year. That’s sad. Very sad. So many exciting things have happened, and I’ve kept it all to myself. Well, truthfully, what happened was junior year. It was really tough. And in the time that I had off I didn’t feel like writing. At all. Which is why nothing happened on this blog this summer. I was lazy and played Civ 4 all day, or else worked. Hopefully, these lulls are in the past. Senior year is much better workload wise, and I feel like writing again. Of course, the more feedback I get, the more motivation I have to keep content coming. So please, subscribe if you like the blog (even though I don’t have anything new yet!), and leave feedback with what you want me to write about. Ok, enough of that. So here’s some of the highlights for the past year: Continue reading →